Web customer care: An empirical analysis of Italian wine companies

The promises of the Internet as a platform to reach new outlets, markets of global dimensions, intimate customer relationships, low cost and streamlined distribution chains have largely been disappointed in the wine industry. The current work used a typical e-mail commercial survey to investigate web customer service offered by 300 wine companies across Italy. The final outcome was an overall 55% response rate. Among these firms there was a clear difficulty in providing timely and informative e-mail responses to their customers. Specifically, only 18% replied within 4 hours, 37% taking into account answers given within 12 hours. The results also exemplify significant differences in e-mail customer service, based on the business location. The poor responsiveness and quality of the information provided by many wine companies illustrate that better web policies and training would give these firms an immediate competitive advantage via improved e-mail customer service.